Mar 26, 2020
Every business observed the coronavirus pandemic’s twin thread disrupting our lives as well as livelihoods. Many of us were clearly not ready for this challenge, the work from home culture – the New Normal. So, we faced major disruptions in the supply chain, bottlenecks in workplace productivity, and hindrance in the process management.
However, GOQii was prepared for this eruption. They have been following international markets and understanding the future impact of the pandemic. Based on their disaster preparedness, the company was prepared for the pandemic days before the actual lockdown.
GOQii is a tech-powered platform that has created an entire healthcare ecosystem. From personalised coaching to healthcare monitoring devices, it offers end-to-end health management solutions.
We invited Vishal Gondal, CEO and Founder of GOQii, for a quick discussion on the pandemic and its impact on product launch. Here’s how it went.
India has never experienced a work from home culture. Many other countries still have a setup and guidelines for work-from-home, but the solution was never considered valuable in our country; until the pandemic hit.
GOQii was actually one of the first companies to start working from home to keep their employees safe and healthy. They started working virtually on the 5th of March, much before the actual ‘Janta Curfew’ or lockdown.
“People laughed at us when they realised that we are virtualising our whole company – every employee to work from home – to achieve work from home culture. Everyone was like why we are doing this.”
However, GOQii saw an opportunity in this pandemic, they wanted to start working from home early to train and prepare their employees. As a result, GOQii started training its entire team and workforce to work virtually, without face-to-face communication, meetings, and office visits.
Since GOQii analysed the situation and understood that they might run into a survival mode in the future, they started preparing their entire infrastructure for it. They started implementing remote tools, offered secure remote access to office applications, and organised the functioning of the whole workspace remotely.
The company started its next work from home drill on the 12th of March, after which they realised that there was no reason to call the workforce to the office and put everybody at the risk of contracting the virus. Therefore, as Janta Curfew was implemented on the 21st of March, which is when a large segment of organisations started working virtually, GOQii was already settled in this culture for around 10 days.
“We have been tracking the international situation, which has helped us realised that it was only a matter of time that this (COVID-19) would hit every one of us. So, we didn’t really wait for orders, we went for the prevention strategy. Clearly, prevention was the key in the pandemic, which was later realised by many organisations.”
Proudly, GOQii was 100% functional even at the onset of the lockdown; except for the functions that depended on the courier. They did not stumble to adjust to the situation.
In fact, the company had launched various new products in the pandemic last year. By November 2020, the company marked a 300% growth in the sale of their product GOQii Vital.
Checking in on your employees or teams regularly is the key to maintaining productivity in a global pandemic. Hence, GOQii consistently checks in on their employees on Hangouts or other mediums used for video chat. They have WhatsApp groups for employees to stay connected; communicate all the time.
“I always tell people that bad news needs to travel faster than the good news. It is just about hyper-communicating right now.”
When we are in the office working with many other team members, communication is simpler. There are many things that we can see and understand from non-verbal communication and the environment. However, when working remotely, this non-verbal communication is not present. Therefore, overcommunicating is the key, as it helps you understand what is going on in the office; both good and bad. This is the one thing that can help you gain success even during disaster conditions – or the global pandemic.
When the curfew was finally announced in India on the 21st of March, 2020, many companies struggled to function properly. It took them some time to become fully operational in every area of their businesses. However, GQOii utilised a preventive strategy to prepare for the situation. As a result, they were better prepared to handle the oncoming challenges and hurdles. They were able to improve productivity, increase revenue, and enhance communication through a series of strategies. One of the ultimate strategies used by the company was overcommunicating to mitigate challenges faced in virtual business operations.
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